Oatmeal and Almond Drink
by thecowscumhome
Summary: It is sweet to have someone wait patiently for you, who never tires of your presence. A Hermione and Snape Two-shot. Just a nice piece of reflection of the relationship. SSHG.
1. Almond

Oatmeal and Almond Drink

**Oatmeal and Almond Drink**

**Serverus Snape and Hermione Granger Two-Shot**

**By**

**Clara**

**AKA**

**TheCows**

**It is sweet to have someone wait patiently for you, who never tires of your presence. A Hermione and Snape Two-shot. Just a nice piece of reflection of the relationship. SSHG.**

Leaves rustled and crunched under the foot of someone who was, at the moment, jangling at the doorknobs. The 'Creek-creek', was a tell-tale sound that someone had entered the sanctuary.

Hermione swung her legs out of the bed, holding up her nightgown daintily and trying to tip-toe out the bedroom as silently as possible so she would not wake the slumbering Ginny Weasley.

The figure who entered in the dark slumped over in the olive-coloured couch.

He was utterly spent and exhausted.

All but the light shuffling of feet could be heard. It was the dead of the night and Hermione Granger made her way into the kitchen pantry. Going on her tiptoes, she reached for a canister of Ching's Almond Powder.

The man on the sofa closed his eyes as he heard the familiar sound of opening drawers and a metal spoon clinking on the kitchen counter.

Jamming the spoon into the fine ridge of the metal can, she pried it open, hearing the soft pop which allowed the contents to be extracted and dolled into two medium sized mugs. On nights like these, she always kept a kettle of hot water on the stove, ready to be re-heated when needed.

As the hoot-hooting sound of boiled water rang out softly into the night, the sofa-man cracked his eyes open, his palm rubbing the temples of his face.

'Clink-clink-clink…'

To others, the pestering stir of a metal spoon in a porcelain mug would annoy the heck out of anyone, especially if on a clear, bright morning before one has had his or her cup of human-izing coffee.

Not so to our dear Professor Snape, or rather, Serverus, to Hermione.

He felt the soft indentation of someone beside him on the hideous couch.

Hermione placed hot mugs of almond drink on the low coffee table, not bothering with coasters. The many rings of brown coffee stains, water stains and crumbs were the result of many such meetings late in the night.

If one did not know better, one might assume these meetings to be at a very unorthodox time between a forty-something Potions Master and a nineteen year old, fresh out of Hogwarts, brilliant top-scorer graduate.

It might even seem rather scandalous.

Anyhow, these two were past caring what other people thought.

"Here, Se.." she still was not accustomed to calling him by his birth name, "Professor Snape." she ended her sentence rather resolutely but with a hint of question.

"Miss Granger." The tired gentleman accepted her drink by acknowledging her.

Hermione looked down, for a brief moment, allowing her disappointment to flash through her eyes by her unanswered question.

He regarded her stance for a moment and grinned uncharacteristically into his cup.

The familiar silence between them began. Slow slurps were the only orchestra that night. Snape liked his drink piping hot and usually got it down faster than Hermione did, who, in fact, blew into the mug and drank with a spoon. This action only ever got one response from the Professor.

'_For goodness sake girl, the drink is going to freeze over. Are you going to blow it to death?'_

_Hermione looked up to her former professor and gave a cool glance before resuming her soft wind actions into her mug and exacting a huge and rather unlady-like slurp from her cup. _

_A sudden laugh had emitted from the Potions professor, to which he promptly covered his mouth and looked into the cup which had long been emptied. Hermione's eyes had shown a look of amusement and surprise at Snape's first sign of being human._

_Laughter._

_And what a beautiful sound at that. _

'_I'm getting another drink.' He said abruptly and promptly left for the pink pantry. _

_He never teased her about her cold drinks neither did she ever mention him laughing. It was a truce made over powdered almond drinks. _

That incident had occurred the second time she had started those late night traditions. Now, despite the recent rather good and civil behavior which baffled the others in the house, Hermione rather craved some sort of response from him, any response would have been welcome, even if it was the same old snarky attitude which she swam through in the 7 years of schooling.

'_Granger' her old professor had sneered. _

'_What's that man doing here?' Hermione has half-shrieked when she saw him standing near Albus at the entrance with his small bags of luggage, which incidentally, contained many books and manuscripts. Same as when Hermione when she and the rest had moved in the sanctuary while the spying and 'war' raged on between good and evil. _

_It took a while to get them settled but everyone knew why Snape was there. He was an unusually important spy for the light side. This caused most people to avoid him like the plague. They just did not know how to deal with a person like him. Terrorizer by day, secret spy in the night. _

_Even in the small house, everyone managed to find a place to congregate and squeeze into so long as they did not need to breathe the same air as their dreaded Potions teacher. All but Albus Dumbledore and… Hermione Granger. _

_This truly had him in a fix. Severus found his new-found power of emptying a room rather amusing and it gave him the solitude he, not loved, but had adapted to through all his years of being an ostracized greasy-feared git of a teacher. _

_The second night he had come back from a mission, he was bruised and battered. The Dark Lord had been angry for some frivolous and empty reason, finding it proof enough to cast spells on Snape to vent his anger. He had been standing, unknowingly, closest to the Dark Lord in the room. _

_He vowed never to stand near Voldemort during meetings. _

_His heavy stumbling had awoken Hermione up, who, for some reasons best left undiscovered, had been staring up into the cracked odd-green ceiling, wondering when her former professor would come back. _

'_Is that him?' _

_She had taken a quick glance at the cat cuckoo clock. 12.37 a.m. _

_Yes, that should be about right. _

_Severus had expected to spend the night on the disgustingly olive-green horror of a sofa trying his best to heal his wounds when he heard one of the bedrooms door creak ajar. _

_He tried his best to fake-sleep his way, making it seem as though he had dozed off. However, the lack of evidence to which he had dozed of to, the bloodied shirt and bruises led smart Hermione Granger to infer there was more to it than his sleeping form. _

_She made the most comforting drink she could think of for a person up midnight and brought it to him, nudging him to remove his apparel so she could inspect the damage. _

_After several healing spells and a quick cleansing spell, Snape felt much more human. _

'_Go to sleep Professor.'_

_Uneasily, he retorted back, he felt he owed her this at least. 'You can… call me Severus.' _

_She mumbled something soft and drew some checked blankets over him. _

_Hermione left and closed the lights. _

The memory had flooded her mind and brought a lovely shade of pink to her cheeks. She thought he could not see but the soft light streaming past the column in the kitchen shone just enough to illuminate her soft cheeks.

"Miss Granger, would you bring me another cup of this almond drink? I find myself rather taken to its taste."

She nodded and left again.

Moving deftly, he withdrew a little vial from his pocket and proceeded to empty its contents into her unfinished drink. For just a moment, he had faltered, thinking carefully about his next action… and their eventual consequences.

Making her fall asleep with a harmless sleeping potion was the only way she would stay in his arms without him telling her directly to her face that he, well, cared and loved her.

In a way, their love was strange and cryptic that way.

As his mind did a fast scan of past events and insults, academic conversations, many tears and worried anxious looks from her as he had been given assignment after assignment, he thought turnabout was fair play.

Smiling in a rather sly-slytherin kind of way, he swirled her mug to mix the potion in and set it down just before she returned with his second helping of powdered almond drink.

_7.57 a.m., the next morning_

"Harry! Something must have gone amiss, Snape didn't return from his mission last night. His bed is empty." Remus Lupin whispered while shaking the sleep deprived youngster up.

Harry furrowed his brows. Nobody said it, but everyone still hoped Snape would return safely back from his dangerous missions.

"Gits probably lying in a ditch somewhere." Ron Weasley remarked snidely.

Well, almost everyone.

"He helps us a great deal Ron." Harry tried to chastise his offensive friend. Ron shrugged.

Harry and Remus were exiting their shared commode. "Where do you think he may've gone? Perhaps…"

"Oh."

Neither dared to speak, until Ron Weasley stepped out along with them, muttering, "Greasy sod, nothing but troub…HEY!"

For there they were. Our Potions Master and Gryfinddor Girl, lying on a really ugly olive shaded sofa.

And not just any side-by-side thing. Hermione Granger had thrown her leg unceremoniously across Severus's lap. Her arms enveloping his waist in a tight hold, just like a security bolster. His actions were equally as appalling. He had his cloak thrown across her shoulders, protecting her from the cold, but it was quite evident that the embrace he had given her through the night would have sufficed.

Hermione was the first to stir from the noise of Ronald. However, all was forgotten as she had laid eyes on her beloved. Smiling at his gallant and thoughtful cloak gesture, she drew her palms lovingly across his cheeks, her eyes brimming with pre-tears as she realized he was trying to tell her he cared for her too.

Completely oblivious to the dumbstruck trio standing just meters from them, she sank back into his embrace. His eyes fluttered open and stayed locked to her gaze for a long time. Their silence was torture to the three guys as they waited with baited breath as to the scene which had transpired before them.

Severus considered giving her a quick kiss but decided that that might be too much for the audience he was aware of.

"Hermione," he started. She gasped, and smiled.

"your friends are behind yo…" he never got a chance to finish his sentence for she had enveloped his lips in a soft and tender kiss, which, to her delight, he returned with equal fervor.

At that moment, Ron blanched and Harry and Remus dragged Ron back into the room before anything violent ensued.

Lying with their head on one side, facing each other, the couple sank back into a close embrace as Minerva, Albus and Ginny filed out slowly to prepare a rather burnt breakfast. **(What to do? They were still in shock.)**

Severus and Hermione stayed that way on a really ugly olive-green sofa for a long time.

**My first try at this pairing. I did this after I had a cuppa almond drink and oatmeal. Please do the 3 Rs! Read, Rate and Review! Like it? **


	2. Oatmeal

11

_11.29 p.m_

Snape was pacing incessantly around the olive green sofa. Ginny peeped out from a little gap in her door, the same room which she shared with Hermione. The whole house was in a state of perpetual worry, for their most loved friend had gone into a covert mission against Voldemort.

As per Hermione's time-table attitude, she had masked her own fear of the mission by planning out the assignment's timetable and splitting it into "Steps". It had worked. They stopped worrying.

Well, till Hermione had actually stepped out of the door. They finally realized that a little piece of parchment containing her well-planned schedule of steps was all they had for comfort. And of course, a piece of writing was a far cry from having the real person around.

"Why her Harry?" Ginny had muttered softly, tears were threatening to leak.

"She offered, and insisted violently." Harry replied with heaviness in his breath.

"_Honestly Harry! Its ridiculous! I should be the one going for this silly thing. Don't put this on him." _

"_Herm, we never would risk you. Come on, yo…"_

_Hermione cut him in mid sentence with the venom of a snake to her words. "And you are saying that Severus is worth risking?! Damn with all of you! Don't do this! He has just been sent on another one of those stupid missions! I'm not sending him away again right after the last one." _

_Harry knew it was pointless to even argue. Her last sentence had the familiar tone which, patented by Hermione, indicated that the argument was won in her favor, and any more deliberation would result in serious Hermione-inflicted consequences. Still, he had to try, he loved her (the friendly way of course). _

"'_Mione, I know you love him but think of how he would feel when he comes back to find you gone?" _

_She turned, and paused, a slight hesitation. Harry had only seen that ever once, and that was then. _

"_I've gone through that same feeling. I go through it everyday when he's not around. I can go through it. He can too." With that, she exited the room. _

After Ginny had heard Harry's recount of the conversation, she brightened.

"Hermione's coming back Harry."

"What?"

"She said she has gone through the same feelings Snape is feeling now. She also said that he'll pull through it. Snape has come back alive every time. She's trying to say that she'll come back, safe and sound." Ginny finished with a smile. She hugged her arms around her shoulders and gave her fiancé a sad little lopsided smile.

Harry thought Ginny might have gone bonkers. However, after thinking about it, he realized she was trying to draw comfort, however ludicrous and logic-boggling, from Hermione's promises. Hermione's promises were her very reputation. If she were not that, she was not Hermione at all.

He drew Ginny into his arms. "You're right love." He smiled into her hair as she dripped some silent tears into his sleeves.

Severus burst into the room, startling the two young lovers. "Ginny," he started, seemingly out of breath, as though he had just run a marathon. He did not blush or turn away, apologizing at the scene of the couple cuddling, like the others did when they stumbled upon them.

"What does Hermione love to eat the most? Her comfort food?" Snape inquired, almost demandingly.

Perplexed by the strange question, she answered. "Why, Oatmeal of course. Why do you as…?"

He had dashed out of the purple painted room and made his way into the previously pink now tainted teal kitchen.

The clink-clink-clink sounds of metal spoon he made were comfortingly like Hermione's. It soothed his own frustrations and anger but made his heart ache with a burden he never had before.

Spooning heaps of Kingsley's Best Organic Rolled Oats, he dipped the spoon into the boiling water, stirring vigorously. Lowering the heat, he let the dish simmer.

"_Uh, so now… you and Snape eh?" Ginny had began._

"_Snape and me yes?" she asked teasingly with perfectly pointed brows. _

"_Nothing." Ginny buried her attention to her charred toast and began spreading dripping butter. _

_The silence at the table had been deafening. Harry snickered. Remus gapped, Ron of course, seethed. Ginny was choking (on her toast), Albus was twinkling and Minerva was studious. _

"_So…" Minerva tried to revive the conversation while eyeing the couple. She had many questions. _

"_When is the wedding?" Albus had cut in, his eyes were laughing. _

_Everyone stopped to stare at the strange new couple. Ron was sputtering like a stalled motor boat. _

_Hermione decided to play along. "Well," she began diplomatically. _

"_That would depend on when __**Severus**__," she strained his first name to emphasize that they were serious about each other. "would like to hold the Spring wedding. Would all of you be coming?" _

_Well, that certainly answered all their questions. Ron was still sputtering though._

"_Ron! Honestly. Stop your sputtering, you sound like a stalled motor boat!" Hermione chided. _

_Severus bellowed with laughter at his girlfriend's little joke. Enough was enough though, Hermione was going to get Severus and her some real breakfast. The burnt thingy was getting a bit old. She took his hand gently and left her stunned friends with the prospect of indigestion. _

"_Oh," she added for extra effect as she turned her heel, "Ginny, you will be my bridesmaid right?" _

Ron had thrown his broomstick on the floor. "She didn't need to go in his place! He doesn't deserve it!"

"Ron." Remus tried to butt in.

"The guy's a git!"

"RON!"

"What!"

"She loves him."

"Oh."

Ron Weasley cared. However, he never was good at channeling his emotions well.

The former Potions Master brought the oatmeal's cooking to a stop. As he lifted the lid of the porcelain pot, the steam of oatmeal wafted into his nostrils.

His eyes were watery. He missed her dreadfully. She had been gone for a full ten days. As he lifted the parchment up to his sight, he grinned sorrowfully at the last sentence on the print. His version (she had made individual copies for all of them, how Hermione.) would be the only one bearing a special significance.

"_I love you Severus. Be strong. I Love You."_ She had scrawled delicately.

"I love you too." He breathed, hoping that wherever she was, she could hear him.

He made batches and batches of oatmeal.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner had been overtaken by Severus Snape. Former Potions Master, current Oatmeal Connoisseur.

"I can't do this! Oatmeal's pouring out of my ears!" Ginny whined when she and Harry were alone.

"Gin, he's just trying to cope." Harry tried to reason to her, partly to himself as well, he suspected. A voice in his ear growled. _One more day of Oatmeal and I'll throw the bloody can out of the window._

Remus was having a hard time trying to perceive his old colleague's actions.

"I'm not complaining," (For once…) Ron Weasley had commented surprisingly. "He makes a mean bowl of Oatmeal." He gulped as he stuffed his face with more Oatmeal and dipped his spoon into honey and milk, adding for good measure, a huge sprinkle of blueberries.

"Not surprising, seeing as Severus has had much practice." Minerva sighed, lifting her spoon of grub gingerly to her mouth.

Albus promised to take her out for some lemon-drop pizza later on, to which she paled even more. Then, they stopped their chattering as Snape entered the dining area, bearing, to their dismay, another big bowl of oatmeal.

However, this time, instead of forcing them to take a bigger portion and then retreating into his own quarters, he sat right down along with the rest of them and began to eat in big hungry slurps.

Ron watched sympathetically.

Ginny's eyes widened when she watched her brother offer Snape some milk and berries to go along with the otherwise plain oatmeal.

Severus declined politely and reverted back to his bowl. Consuming with a passion. Wiping his mouth roughly, he stood and brought his own bowl back to the counter and scourgified the dishes.

It was really peculiar really.

Then, it came to light.

"Hermione's coming back today." Ginny said knowingly, glancing at Hermione's timetable which Snape had enlarged and pasted on the kitchen wall.

…

Leaves rustled and crunched under the foot of someone who was, at the moment, jangling at the doorknobs. The 'Creek-creek', was a tell-tale sound that someone had entered the sanctuary.

Severus Snape strode to the entrance. Ginny was clutching Harry and Ron's arms painfully. Remus went to call Minerva and Albus.

The door opened.

Silence.

Her smile was immaculate. Suddenly, the mission no longer mattered. Nothing did. She was there. He was in front of her. It was as if everything seemed normal, like there was no Voldemort. No war.

Hermione Granger had just come home from a hard day's work to her lover, ready to await a kiss accompanied by, "How was your day honey?" and a "Did you eat well?". That was the vibe.

And that was exactly what had happened.

It seemed so weird. All the tension and the anger, the frustrations and worry had gone at the reunited couple's presence. The only evidence of the odd 15 days and 7 stage plan was the large parchment hanging in shreds on the hideous brown kitchen wall.

Severus kissed Hermione's cheeks and helped her with her cloak. He asked if she was well and how the mission went. It was just a question asked out of politeness. Hermione Granger went for the assignment; of course she managed it with succession.

After the rest hugged Hermione and filed into corners to eavesdrop, the Gryfindor-ess stared at the 10 empty cans of Kingsley's Best Organic Rolled Oats. The shredded huge timetable which hung in pieces.

She tidied her attire and turned to Severus, who stared at her with tired eyes.

"I missed you Severus Snape." She whispered as he drew her into his arms.

"As did I, Hermione Granger."

He kissed her wet cheeks and brushed her unruly hair to the back. They whispered urgent and desperate words to each other.

…

After 20 minutes of desperate whisperings…

"Well, Severus, sit." She pointed to the new magically painted (by Albus) orange chairs in the dining.

The couple's chatter had fallen to the usual bantering of discoveries and silly trifles.

"That's it?" whispered Ron from behind the pillar which the six were hiding behind.

"Well, they are rather unusual…" Remus interjected.

"A power-couple." Affirmed Albus.

"Look! Look you guys… Hermione's wedding finger!" Ginny half shriek-whispered.

There it was, no doubt. A cool little platinum ring, resting perfectly on Hermione's fourth finger. An engagement ring. It shimmered in the dim kitchen lights as she laid down two mugs of powered almond drinks, set on the pretty sky-blue table without coasters, beside a big bowl of oatmeal which she and Severus was going to share.

…

**The End**

**OOOHHH! So much fun to write this. I finished this after having my own bowl of oatmeal. Had a nice feeling after writing this. PLEASE read, rate and review. ) Much Loves, xxoo –TheCows-**


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